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I am trying to compose a special food gift for my folks, and I wanted to buy a loaf of Poilane bread - yes, it's extravagant - from their site. I placed an order, but was never asked for a cc#. I have serious doubts about this. Anyone ever placed an order with them?

Years and years ago I lived up the block and across the street from a large country store on the outskirts of a college town that sold incredible cheesecakes, Archie comic books for the devout and everything you could possibly need for baking for cheap: all in clear plastic bags sealed with twist ties, weighed and priced. There and then I first noticed different kinds of powdered milk sold next to yeast, wheat berries and rye flour. These were the days that the popularity of Diet for a Small Planet was just beginning to wane and I always associated dehydrated milk with that kind of economical, fringe cooking. Having somehow misplaced my favorite source of simple, basic bread recipes, I opened up Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (1997; sorry, no time to tend a poolish) and was surprised to see that Deborah Madison recommends the use of dry milk or dried buttermilk in several of her bread recipes. Since there are only a few recipes, it is hard to see a pattern. However, in one case, the recipe is for a whole wheat bread that includes a little gluten flour, but no unbleached white; another is for a rye bread. Does powdered milk complement heartier flours in a way that distinguishes it from fresh milk or buttermilk? Or might it be an established, superior source of protein for vegetarians? Edited to ask: Do I need to make any adjustments in simply replacing some of the water in the recipe with milk--other than, perhaps, increasing the amount of flour slightly?

My girlfriend just sent me this recipe.. It looks outrageous.. Honestly Paula Dean is by far the sickest person I have seen... I could see Emeril telling her to calm down a bit and maybe not use so much fat and fried foods.. Has anyone tried this or used Krispy Kremes in a recipe before.. It looks very healthy.. Here is the link.. Krispy Kreme

So here I am a professional pastry chef.........and I thought I made a very good apple bread, until last year when a neighbors apple bread wowed the socks off my husband (and me too). We've both asked her for the recipe multiple times, but she's not parting with her recipe...even though she's never been rude about it, just avoids ever writing hers down. SOoooo I need to make tons of apple bread as an item in our Thanksgiving food package at work and now I'm embarassed to use my old recipe knowing theres better out there. I'm searching for 'the BEST Knock your socks off' apple bread recipe in the world! Anyone own that one incredible recipe? If so, would you please share it with me?

Since the demise of my bread machine I have been making bread quite successfully using the K/A. However, I have just made a loaf of white sandwich bread and while the bread itself is quite good, the loaf shape is less than ideal as the top "mushroomed". I make at least two multi-grain loaves each week and don't have this problem. Any ideas? Too much gluten development? Wrong oven temp? The recipe is "American Sandwich Bread" from Cook's Illustrated. Thanks for any tips you might have.

Does anyone know where I can purchase good stuffed breads in the Bloomfield/Montclair/Livingston/ East Hanover area? I would like to cut the breads into slices and serve for Christmas as one of my appetizers. Thanks!

Our gingerbread village is being installed today! After 4 months of planning, I am VERY excited! And ready to get it over with, and move on with the holidays. I will take photos today when it's all done, post them if I can figure out how, and will anxiously await others, doing the same. Tell us your stories of gingerbread happiness and heartache. We all have them, like the time the ring tailed cat came down from the mountain, pushed open the floor-to-ceiling glass doors and ate my very first one. Or just last year, when all of ours collapsed in the weird southeastern humidity I wasn't prepared for. Or my beautiful, faithful reproduction of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesen West that no one in Detroit recognised. This year's theme is How the Grinch Stole Christmas. It was (I think) Leslie's idea, and we watched her sister's copy of the Jim Carrey movie to get inspiration. Now, as I look around my office at the houses ready to go, I am reminded of what an incredibly talented team of women I work with everyday. The houses have curves and weird shapes, painted with pastel hues of royal icing and slathered with Nerds and silver dragees. Leslie's made the mountain behind Whoville, as well as the most incredible Grinch, and Max, ever recreated in marzipan. If she ever tires of being in pastry, she has a career in claymation waiting for her! For as much as she's complained the last half of this year about the gingerbread, she's done an incredible job. Robyn's made a three-sided apartment building, Who Heights. Krissy made a circular house, that started out with, "What if I draped gingerbread over a bowl?" Erica tried to follow suit, but ended up with a completely different and beautiful house. Well, I'm excited! I'm on my way to work and will post the photos this afternoon. Your turn! Share your stories and photos! Happy Holidays!

Thinking of Hostess Gifts..... I've just made the dough for chocolate shortbread using a recipe from CAPRIAL'S CAFE cookbook, & it tastes wonderful. Very intense flavour....( I used Dutch process cocoa , although it didn't specify it.) My question is: seeing as how I would like to give these cookies as gifts, should I bake, & let them "ripen" the way I do with Scotch shortbread, or freeze the dough, & bake as needed?

More than a decade ago, we had a restaurant named after, and specializing in, a type of bread which also lent its name to sandwiches made with it. I believe they were called tieso (or perhaps hyphenated ties-o). I loved them and ate lunch there a lot. The memory of them still haunts me but I am apparently misremembering the name or spelling, as I cannot find any information on them anywhere. I know that some foods are particular to a tiny village and may not find their way into the more mainstream culture, but thought I would reach out to the Society members in that part of the world for assistance. Thanks in advance for any hints, clues, recipes or suggestions of resources or alternate spellings.

Does anybody have a good recipe for gluten free shortbread. My aunt has asked me to make some for christmas, she and her son both have gluten allergies. She has made a few attempts with a mix of flours she uses, but it never produces that melt in your mouth quality that she is craving. One problem was with rice flour being in the mix, it was very grainy. So that option is definately out. Trials with an alternative grain mix was very heavy, and the texture of the grains just wasn't right I am planning to experiment with different perportions of corn starch, arrowroot, tapioca, and I've even thought about chickpea flour. If anybody has a recipe that they know works, please pass it on, it would save alot of trial and error on my part.

Due to a miscalculation of my own cooking ability I was left with a kilo of masa harina and some fresh yeast after the weekends Mexican cooking. So I combined the two. I made a fairly straight forward hearth cake mix then cooked in very slowly on on side until the bottom was brown and very crisp, while the top was soft, but cooked though. This was then filled with some bean chile that I made. Thus: OK, it was very good and with a bit of refinement it could be even better, but my question is, is this type of yeast cooking done in the Mexican kitchen (if so recipes or descriptions) or have I invented the fluffy taco?

Over in my foodblog, several members asked questions about this bread sculpture: I too would like to know more about that wine bottle bread. Way back upthread, Mitch (a.k.a. boulak) offered to tell more about the baking school ovens and answer other questions about the process. Since the blog will be closing soon, here's my request to him to please start a thread telling more about the school and the gear! Let's start with: how do they bake that bread with the wine bottle, without overheating the bottle and/or scorching the label? And how do the decorative bread doughs differ from regular doughs? ← I thought I'd get this started. What tips, ideas, and recipes do people have?

After reading few bread books where authors explained their way of rounding and shaping, I still have few unclear points. First, what is the actual difference in technique between rounding and shaping - first is actually preliminary shaping, but, say, after rounding into boule my bread looks already pretty round - so how should I proceed with final shaping? Second, what are the most successful techniques of shaping in basic forms while retaining as much gas as possible - please, share your findings. Third, how to seal a boule properly? As I have some flour under the loaf to prevent sticking to the bench, when I'm trying to seal the loaf, that flour doesn't allow sides of the dough to stick to each other; another side effect is that some of that raw flour remains inside of the seal is, i.e. goes into the loaf. Should I use less or no flour at this stage?

My frustration has knows no bounds at this point. For several years, I have been happily making gingerbread for my restaurant in a non-stick bundt pan, and it has worked beautifully. The customers adore it. And the food cost is excellent, so I am loath to abandon it. For quite some time now, when I turn the cake out, the bottom stays with the pan, not with the rest of the cake, rendering it unusable. The pan is in good shape. I cool the cake for the same 25 minutes I always have, loosening it gently around the sides first. I have tried adjusting the oven temperature a bit, and the rack position too. I have tried reducing the number of eggs from 4 to 3. Sometimes it works, but usually not. Needless to say, the making of the gingerbread is now fraught with anxiety. I would greatly appreciate any ideas that anyone might have. The customers will sqawk bitterly if they're deprived of one of their favourites. BTW, I am reluctant to abandon the Bundt pan because it presents so beautifully on the plate.

I'm in the middliing stages of putting together my bread kitchen and am thinking about the sorts of things I'd like the customer to know about how I make the breads, apart from specific ingredients -- that I get my bread flour locally, for example, and the mill is the oldest mill in the state, what it means that many of the breads are naturally-leavened, maybe a little something about what naturally-leavened means relative to "sour dough," something about the discrete properties of the flours as opposed to all-purpose flour, a little about my wood-burning Alan Scott oven, the sorts of long processes of fermenting the doughs, that sort of thing. What sorts of information do you like to see on a bag when you pick up a loaf of bread? And would some well-written background information (historical, local, etc.) be of interest?

The local Tesco Extra is stocking La Brea bread. I bought a "Country white Sourdough Oval". Not bad at all. Good grigne, good crust,nice open crumb texture. Bread actually tastes of something with a mild sourdough tang. The crust has the little bubbles that comes from being a retarded dough. One of the bakers told me that they get the dough and then bake it off in store. The packet has a web site: http://www.labreabakery.com/ and an address in Uxbridge and in Dublin. Here the plot thickens, since the web site has a refereence to http://www.iaws.ie/default.asp also based in Dublin "IAWS GROUP plc is a major food and agri-business group with operations in Ireland, Great Britain, continental Europe, Canada and the United States." and it turns out that LaBrea is a group company, along with Delice de France, Cuisine de France and other brands. Under La Brea it says " The breads are baked 80% then flash frozen and shipped to retailers and restaurants... where the baking process is finished off." Looking at the table of ingredients there are a few surprises. Flour (contains wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, Reduced Iron,Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavine,Folic Acid), Water, Sourdough (6.84%), Salt, Wheat Germ, Semolina. The malted barley is a souce of an enzyme to help convert starch to sugars. Perfectly respectable. Wheat Germ is I guess added for flavour, and also enzmes. The sourdough (same sub-list of ingredients) looks like an old dough addition, rather than a seperate ferment, but I'm guessing. Semolina is widely used to stop the dough sticking. Nothing wrong there, and nice of them to declare it, since its in such a small amount. The thing that has me puzzled are the vitamins etc. Looks like they are added to the flour as nutrition supplements. Is this a US requirement? I don't think its needed for the bread. Nothing in the marketing says "Multivitamins added" or the like. Indeed the front of the package claims "No artificial additives".

Natural levain bread baked in brick ovens. Yippee! A bakery outlet in Puebla and in Oaxaca City. Click on the "pan" to reveal all. Pan

I would like to make a sort of walnut bread to include on our cheese plate. I am not looking for a supersweet breakfast/coffee cake type bread, rather one that is more savory, to complement the candied nuts, rhubarb chutney and quince paste currently on the plate with four cheeses. (It could also be maybe a walnut-fig bread or somesuch... you know what I'm going for...) I know I have had similar in another restaurant or two, but I can't seem to find anything even close, searching through all my books, the library, and the internet. Does anyone have any advice on where I might look, or perhaps have a recipe to share?

This is really starting to annoy me. Where the hell can you buy bread or cake flour in sydney? I don't want bread mix with Soy Lethicin and yeast and whatever else they try and cram in there. I just want honest to god flour with a protien content above 12%. Maybe 15% if it wasn't hoping for too much. And what about cake flour? Something below 8% would be nice too. Instead, every single flour sold at every single supermarket I've ever been in is between 9 and 11%. The only things outside of that range are wierd mixes.

After popping into Vintropolis (the B.C. wine store on W. 1st) to pick up a nice Rose (they, by the way, are surprisingly well priced with a nice selection of inexpensive B.C. wines) I decided to grab a loaf of bread at Pane From Heaven. Well, I guess Heaven has stopped delivering as they no longer sell bread and apparently haven't for the last three months. By default I thought I would try the relatively newly renovated Bread Gardens to see what they might have. Again, just mediocre take out food and no bread. Has Cobbs taken over to the extent that local bread places are having to eliminate their reason for opening in the first place? In the case of Pane From Heaven (and Pane Formaggio on W. 10th) the selection of breads and baked goods borrowed heavily from Ecco il Pane recipes that a former baker took with him when he left and perhaps he just decided to return them!!! As for the new Bread Gardens I don't give them a year.

Hello, all. I'm an avid bread baker with a recurring problem. The tops of my loaves stretch, instead of being cleanly cut, when I'm cutting their tops before putting them in the oven. I'm using a fresh, new very sharp X-Acto #11 blade, which has a point, and is triangular shaped, and holding it almost parallell to the work surface, just as I learned at the French Pastry School in Chicago, where I took a great class. Now I know my blade is not the traditional lame shape, but shouldn't that work as well, as long as it's very sharp? Thanks in advance.

For those of you who love French pastry, Seattle has a wonderful purveyor of the art: Carolyn Ferguson, owner of Belle Epicurean. She sells her creations at the U District Farmer's Market on Saturdays. My favorites are the chocolate walnut bun and the ham & cheese galette. Soon (in the fall) Carolyn will be opening a retail shop in the Olympic Hotel. I'm delighted that Food & Wine Magazine read my post about her in my blog & is interested in including her work in an article about artisanal bakeries. I'd love to see her get her "due" in a national food publication! And I'm so jazzed that I could be the matchmaker! Here's the link to my post: http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_ol...-best-pastries/ (I have no commerical interest whatsoever in Belle's Buns)

I have been asked to prepare shortbread but with splenda. I have made a lot of drop cookies and loaves with splenda successfully but shortbread is a bit more fussy and has less ingredients to cover the taste of the sweetener (though I will be flavouring them with espresso powder). Has anyone here done this with success? Thanks in advance!

Hi, I'm a newbie to the world of baking .. being prone to "improvising" when it comes to the kitchen, I always thought of baking as too precise an art for me to be able to handle! However, I adore good bread and am always very envious when I go to peoples houses and see them serving bread they made in their own kitchen. I would really like to learn to make my own bread. I am planning to get one of the books on making bread for the home baker (I saw some really nce threads about this elsewhere on egullet). However, I have sme other questions I would like answered. Apologize if any of them are too silly but I really truly hve never ventured in this direction and practically know nothing about making bread. 1. Do I need a bread machine to be able to make my own bread ? If yes, can I get some recommendations on brand and make. I am really looking for something affordable and yet decent. 2. Any other tips on what kind of bread to start with? thanks a bunch in advance, worm@work

The childhood treats thread got me thinking about King's Hawaiian sweet bread. When I was a kid my favorite way to eat it was with butter and sugar. The sugar was either whipped into the butter or sprinkled on top. My kids like it with nutella. We can't get sliced brioche in LA so we use sliced King's Hawaiian bread. What's your favorite way to eat it?